I have been married now, and to the same woman, for two thirds of my life. But then "the same woman" is a phrase that rebounds somewhat, for the woman I married is not by any means the same woman I am currently married to, nor am I the same man she married, and therein hangs a tale, perhaps for another time.
They may call it wedlock, but it's not gridlock. Stasis is not something you can expect from marriage any more than you can expect it from life, which is why we call it married life, I suppose. No matter how much we might want to sustain a particularly happy moment in our marriage -- "Oh, Darling, why can't it be like this forever?" -- it can't be like this forever, and that's just the way things are.
Now that may sound grim, but it isn't meant to. Because I am a better man than I used to be: grayer, shakier, deafer, more forgetful and more disabused, certainly; nevertheless I do occasionally have a game changing insight that keeps the ball moving down the field.
My latest involves a longstanding pattern of our marriage that has occasionally sent us to our respective corners, bloodied, bruised and breathless after a verbal round of recriminations.
Here's what rings the bell. Debbie goes off somewhere on business, and I take the opportunity her absence presents of taking on some grandiose household project: tearing down a wall, building shelves, replacing the porch posts with columns, installing a hammock, clearing out a dying hedge -- you name it; I'm handy.
Now, I love to do this stuff. Nothing cheers me like slapping something together to delight Debbie on her return. The problem is that she is rarely delighted, or in any case, rarely delighted to a degree I deem commensurate to the wonderful thing I've just done for her. So I either sulk about this -- and I'm very good at sulking -- or I let her have it. "You don't appreciate all the things I do for you. And because you don't appreciate all the things I do for you, I am reduced to having to beg for your appreciation, and it's humiliating."
But the last time around I prefaced all this with, "Now, I love doing this stuff, but -- " and then launched into my usual whine, to which she protested that she had thanked me, that she did say she liked the new raised bed I built for her. So what did I want her to do? Get down on her knees and throw up?
I hesitate to reckon how many times we've had this argument, but something about my preface this time -- "I love doing this stuff" -- nagged at me afterward, and suddenly it occurred to me that as a matter of fact I don't do these things for Debbie. I do them for myself. I do them for the pleasure of doing them.
A little more thanks from her would be nice, sure, but not absolutely necessary if I simply absolve her of the expectation of tears of gratitude and whoops of appreciation I reflexively whip up as I go about my business.
I realize that I have done a version of this all my life: volunteering to be the go-to guy in family crises, making myself indispensable, and then resenting the hell out of everyone else for being insufficiently grateful, and for not stepping in more, when in fact I have left no room for them to step.
I am much more likely to forget an insight than to have one, so I hurried over to Debbie with this one. From now on, I told her, I would not set us both up for another round or two of recrimination. She looked doubtful, but I meant it. Henceforward I will desist from pushing my own inner resentment button and stop setting her up for a fall.
I just hope she appreciates it.
They may call it wedlock, but it's not gridlock. Stasis is not something you can expect from marriage any more than you can expect it from life, which is why we call it married life, I suppose. No matter how much we might want to sustain a particularly happy moment in our marriage -- "Oh, Darling, why can't it be like this forever?" -- it can't be like this forever, and that's just the way things are.
Now that may sound grim, but it isn't meant to. Because I am a better man than I used to be: grayer, shakier, deafer, more forgetful and more disabused, certainly; nevertheless I do occasionally have a game changing insight that keeps the ball moving down the field.
My latest involves a longstanding pattern of our marriage that has occasionally sent us to our respective corners, bloodied, bruised and breathless after a verbal round of recriminations.
Here's what rings the bell. Debbie goes off somewhere on business, and I take the opportunity her absence presents of taking on some grandiose household project: tearing down a wall, building shelves, replacing the porch posts with columns, installing a hammock, clearing out a dying hedge -- you name it; I'm handy.
Now, I love to do this stuff. Nothing cheers me like slapping something together to delight Debbie on her return. The problem is that she is rarely delighted, or in any case, rarely delighted to a degree I deem commensurate to the wonderful thing I've just done for her. So I either sulk about this -- and I'm very good at sulking -- or I let her have it. "You don't appreciate all the things I do for you. And because you don't appreciate all the things I do for you, I am reduced to having to beg for your appreciation, and it's humiliating."
But the last time around I prefaced all this with, "Now, I love doing this stuff, but -- " and then launched into my usual whine, to which she protested that she had thanked me, that she did say she liked the new raised bed I built for her. So what did I want her to do? Get down on her knees and throw up?
I hesitate to reckon how many times we've had this argument, but something about my preface this time -- "I love doing this stuff" -- nagged at me afterward, and suddenly it occurred to me that as a matter of fact I don't do these things for Debbie. I do them for myself. I do them for the pleasure of doing them.
A little more thanks from her would be nice, sure, but not absolutely necessary if I simply absolve her of the expectation of tears of gratitude and whoops of appreciation I reflexively whip up as I go about my business.
I realize that I have done a version of this all my life: volunteering to be the go-to guy in family crises, making myself indispensable, and then resenting the hell out of everyone else for being insufficiently grateful, and for not stepping in more, when in fact I have left no room for them to step.
I am much more likely to forget an insight than to have one, so I hurried over to Debbie with this one. From now on, I told her, I would not set us both up for another round or two of recrimination. She looked doubtful, but I meant it. Henceforward I will desist from pushing my own inner resentment button and stop setting her up for a fall.
I just hope she appreciates it.
No comments:
Post a Comment